Give someone you love (including yourself) a gift you can’t buy.
Give them the gift of meaningful experiences.
Here are a few ideas:
- Give a homemade holiday dinner. My friend Jacki was running low on money for holiday gifts to give to our large group of close friends, so she invited everyone to an incredible four course dinner served by her, by candlelight on fine china and silver tea service at her home. I am still talking about it 25 years later.
- Give a hike. Include gorp for the walk. Do all the planning and get directions. Find a nice little diner where you can end the excursion so you can rehash the climb and where you can post your summit selfie to Facebook.
- Give the gift of story. When my daughter was 10, she wrote a story for each member of our family. In his or her story, she made each person the hero. One person was a good pirate, swashbuckling around to save the day. Another was an astronaut. She included all of their hobbies and idiosyncrasies. That made each one a treasure.
- It’s time to make a coupon book. But fill it with 12 months of meaningful experiences. Your pick.
- 12 months of love letters to your squeeze. Knowing ahead of time they are going to receive one each month gives them something to look forward to. Get creative with the containers they come in so there is an element of surprise.
- Give a pledge of no cell phones or screens for the hour during and around meal times.
- I’m loving this pledge idea, so how about a pledge of doing the other person’s chores for a week. Their choice of weeks.
- Give a gift of computer lessons to your mother. She gets 10 free anytime phone calls when she can’t turn on her computer. Or forward a message. Or buy something online.
- Give a playlist. For those of us not into Spotify, give us a playlist for different times of our lives so we don’t have to laboriously listen to and search for songs. I am thinking that relaxing songs, tunes that make you dance, and old favorites would be great lists. Or pick out songs that mean something to the two of you. I love to laugh more than about anything, so I would personally love a list of online links to really funny things.
- Give a year’s membership to the National Whitewater Center if you are in Charlotte. Or a package of passes to one of those trampoline places. I have wanted to take a trampoline exercise class. How about adult ice skating classes? I have wanted to take a knife skills class at Whole Foods. It would be even better if the gift given took the class with me.
- A tour of your own city. By bike or moped or Segue would be even cooler. Personally, I want to take the walking tour of Charlotte public art. You can download the docent on your iPod.
- A massage. Or chiropractic adjustment. Or tarot card reading… Something off the beaten path.
And then, FOLLOW THROUGH. Don’t give the gift of an experience and then never give the person the actual experience. Bah humbug.
Give yourself a gift too. Take the pressure off of your loved ones to guess what you want. Buy it or do it for yourself.
Merry Christmas,
Happy Hanukah,
Happy Kwanzaa ,
Happy New Years!
I've always told Bayla I thought she had Susan's hands. I am glad I had the chance to take a photo.
We were given a Christmas miracle. It’s one more Christmas with Susan.
Susan is my husband’s sweet, lovely sister. She was diagnosed with cancer in September, after waking up paralyzed. The paralysis was caused by the tumors in her brain. But there are many others in many parts of her body and they are growing faster than a teenage boy in puberty.
I called Susan as they were shaving her head for surgery and I got off the phone feeling loved and appreciated and special. Wow. She is one of those people who has the sweetness of spirit to make ME feel precious during HER mortal struggles.
The afternoon I spent alone by her bedside talking was an afternoon I will treasure forever.
These are conversations I would never have had if she hadn’t gotten sick.
It is the gift cancer has given us… time and deep connection.
I am the least of it. The whole Yale family has swarmed in and created a team of loving, serving kindness. As I stay in Charlotte and care for my children, the rest of the tribe have swarmed the little town of Traphill and cared for her like no other family I’ve seen.
The are feeding her, caring for her physical needs, renovating her house, handling her finances, buying her stuffed animals, holding her hand, gazing into her eyes, combing her hair…
It’s one big intense love-fest.
These are the meaningful conversations that give life depth and texture.
These are the illnesses that make us stop and grab the time while we have it.
The time we have left may be a moment, or weeks or months. Any length is enough.
This is the human experience, and I’m so thankful that Susan has stopped us all and given us this gift.
Christmas is a time to love. I am off to visit my Christmas miracle.
Your body can be a great source of joy.
Stop snickering. It’s no wonder we don’t talk about sensuality if you are going to snicker like a preteen boy when I bring it up.
None-the-less, when is the last time you lingered in the shower, paying attention to the feeling of water splashing on your skin?
When is the last time you breathed in deeply just to feel power of your lungs expand?
Have you noticed the deepness of blue color in the sky lately?
If you look around you can see that there is one sense we over-use… taste. If you are overweight you are usually trying to get all your sensory joy through taste.
It’s a taste monopoly.
Let’s break up the monopoly. Spread out the good feelings. Yes, you are free to have all the sex you want. But that’s just one way to feel good. There are limitless sensations to enjoy.
Indulge yourself visually. Binge view art. Or your child’s face. Or the colors of the grass and the clouds and the sky.
Stop and listen to a really great song with headphones. Choose one that brings back good memories. Or a song that is exquisitely performed.
Indulge all of your senses so you don’t look for all of your pleasure in food.
Your thighs will thank you. And you can increase your pleasure five fold when you layer fabulous feelings from all of your senses.
There are two ways to do it.
One: you can really zone into one experience with all your senses.
Two: You can layer different experiences together with purpose.
Here’s and example of my full frontal sense indulgence from this morning…
Sight: I chose a seat in my office looking out on the beautiful stone hearth and ivy bank with little chipmunks darting in and out of the holes in the stone wall.
Smell: I burned some Palo Santo (Holy Wood) that gives a delicious licorice-like smell.
Taste: Fresh raspberries
Sound: I put on some James Taylor. I played my favorites from college, and those great college feelings came through to me too.
Touch: I cuddled up in an incredibly soft blanket.
And then I paid attention to my senses. All of them.
Mmmmmmmm.
*No eclairs were harmed in the writing of this post.